David Fanshawe was a British composer/ethnomusicologist/explorer who spent much of his life recording indigenous music throughout Africa and in other music-rich, unrecorded cultures. He literally carried a recording device through the jungles, across prairies and deserts, and into the undocumented cultures of numerous South Pacific islands for decades in pre-PC years (60s, 70s, 80s). In the earliest years this meant hauling reel-to-reel recording devices and numerous reels of tape while wading through rivers, chopping a way through uncharted tropics, and crossing blistering deserts. As he would reach a port from which he could ship, the individual recordings--with no back-up copies -- would be forwarded to his home base to be codified and held for his occasional returns to his home in the UK. Fanshawe's primary purpose always was to make a permanent record of traditional indigenous music of tribes and cultures before those cultures perished, or before their contact with the outside world tainted or diluted or completely supplanted those individual musical traditions. Although Fanshawe was a much respected and prolific composer for many voices and instruments, AFRICAN SANCTUS is certain to be the composition for which he is most remembered. This towering choral work combines the traditional Catholic mass with melodies, drums, and other recorded sounds -- even natural ones like the sound of monsoon rains -- from his African recordings. The result is a truly unique cr